Gross weight and mass distribution are attributes that impact an aircraft's operation. For example, the attributes may impact the aircraft's stability, handling qualities, control authority, and operational maintenance. Acquiring mass attributes traditionally has been based on manual entry. Existing techniques for sensing aircraft attributes (e.g., mass) make use of data from a suite of sensors, such as cargo hook load cells and fuel level sensors to estimate values for the attributes. Such techniques are limited at least in terms of accuracy, such that additional reliability sensors must be added to measure unknown contributions. An invocation or utilization of the additional sensors include a number of drawbacks, such as increased complexity, increased weight of the aircraft, and decreased reliability of the overall aircraft as a result of another potential source of failure.